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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27192916">Fictober 2020 Natsume's Book of Friends Fills</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmnesiaticRoses/pseuds/AmnesiaticRoses'>AmnesiaticRoses</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fictober 2020 Fills [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:23:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,610</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27192916</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmnesiaticRoses/pseuds/AmnesiaticRoses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Here lie my Fictober 2020 fills for Natsume's Book of Friends. :)</p><p>Prompt 7: “Yes I did, what about it?” -- Natsume is willing to give back yokai's names, but sometimes the gift must be earned.<br/>Prompt 25: “Sometimes you can even see.” -- Being able to see yokai can lead to some confusing moments.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fictober 2020 Fills [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prompt 7: An Honorable Challenge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>These are un-beta-ed, largely unedited and hastily written, since I'm trying to keep to writing about one a day. So, apologies if there are issues with them! Some are stories I thought about writing for a while. Some are short scenes I might turn into longer fics in the future. And some, I admit, were thrown together on a whim. Comments and critique welcome, as always.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>When a challenge appears written in flowers in the yard at night, Natsume has to take a trip to answer an honorable challenge.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s never a good time to hear your friend’s parents ask if you’ve seen them, but Natsume isn’t sure it can ever feel worse than this.</p><p>“Ah, well thank you,” the monk on the other end of the phone line says. Natsume can tell he’s trying to sound upbeat, but concern bleeds through. Who could blame him. Coming home early from a work trip, only to find his son missing, bed un-slept-in? </p><p>“I can call some of our other classmates if you’d like?”</p><p>Mr. Tanuma pauses. Trying to think if he knows the other classmates, Natsume guesses. Their names. Their numbers. “That would be kind of you,” he says after a lengthy pause. There is a subtle sadness there. His job keeps him away from home a lot, Natsume knows. Long hours. Sometimes days at a time. He knows some of his son’s friends, but assumes he doesn’t know all of them.</p><p>It makes Natsume feel a little bad for the man.</p><p>He calls around, but no one’s seen Tanuma since they were leaving school earlier that day. He looks outside at the darkness that’s settled over the countryside. He sees Aunt Touko watching him, her own worry in her eyes, and refrains from asking if he can go out to look. He’ll only worry her more.</p><p>It’s not until an hour later, after he’s retired to his room and is trying ineffectually to work on his math homework, that he realizes how quiet Nyanko-Sensei has been. What a sly expression he’s watching Natsume with. And of course, of COURSE when he asks, Sensei knows something. Of course.</p><p>“It took you a while to bother asking,” he says, nibbling on a meat-stuffed pastry he swiped from somewhere. “Though I expected you’d find the invitation before asking me.”</p><p>“Invitation?”</p><p>Sensei gestures with one stubby paw toward the window. And when Natsume crosses to the window and peers outside, he can see fireflies milling around a section of the yard. Once the house grows quiet, he prowls downstairs to check out the spot more closely.</p><p>The little flowers he finds there aren’t a type he thinks he’s seen before, pale yellow and glowing like tired stars. They spell out, “I challenge. Arch of Stars.”</p><p>“Arch of stars?” murmurs Natsume.</p><p>“It’s a place, but not in the human world,” Sensei says, as though explaining such mundane things is a chore for him. “It’s not far.”</p><p>The bored attitude is grinding on Natsume’s nerves. “And this has to do with Tanuma?”</p><p>“Not to do with him. But it’s probably connected to his disappearance.” How can he be so calm?</p><p>They travel through the night mostly in silence, broken only when discussing directions or when Sensei grumbles about needing a drink. And at last, with the moon peeking through the trees, they arrive in a weedy clearing and the remains of a house.</p><p>Natsume has no eye for the age of human things, but this home has clearly been here a long time. Been empty for a long time. He can see the remnants of it, what had once been a modest home with a little stone garden, but the garden can only be seen as seams between the weeds and the house only shows a skeleton of its former self. The weathered remains of the stout timbers that marked the intersections of walls pointed accusations at the sky. The doorway still stands, a sketchy shadow against the night.</p><p>“Through there,” Sensei says, looking at the doorway then back at his ward. “You’ll find the arch of stars on the other side.” At the doubtful look on Natsume’s face, he adds, “Trust me, you don’t want the story of how this became a doorway to the spirit world. We don’t have time for you to have an emotional moment. Come on.” Then he walks up to the doorway and disappears. </p><p>Natsume still hesitates at the threshold. Most of the building is gone, but the crumbled remains have tumbled inward, turning the interior of the old house into a minefield of splinters and jagged chunks of wood. But Sensei, whatever his faults, wouldn’t lie about something like this. So steeling himself, he steps through.</p><p>Into a blue twilight.</p><p>He stops after that first step, just looking around and drinking it all in. A series of blue flowers grow off slender vines which have wound into all the trees in the area. The pollen in the center of each bloom glows like a dusting of moonlight. He twists to look at the arch he stepped through to find that it’s seemingly made entirely of the vines. Their light makes his hands and clothing luminescent. A faint smell, summer and vanilla and something otherworldly, hangs in the air. </p><p>A few paces ahead of him stands Sensei. And beyond that hulks a giant yokai, watching him with eyes like polished obsidian. When Sensei just watches him impatiently, Natsume addresses the creature. “Are you the one who left the message?”</p><p>The creature moves, and Natsume realizes it had been kneeling before, but now it is unfolding, taller and taller, until it’s a good twenty feet tall. It speaks, its voice like two rocks grinding against one another, low and slow, so slow that it takes Natsume’s brain a bit of stitching to put the words together.</p><p>“Accept. Challenge?” The words make the ground underfoot tremble slightly.</p><p>“First, have you seen my friend?” Natsume asks.</p><p>The creature regards him for several long seconds, then to his surprise, it lowers its head to look at Sensei. Natsume’s not sure if they have some way of talking he can’t hear, but a moment later, Sensei says to him, “Tanuma is here somewhere. He’s fine. He’ll be released safely after the challenge, whatever the outcome.”</p><p>Sensei’s not lying, he can tell that much. And some sense of tension saps out of him at the news his friend is actually here and will be OK. Can be kept safe.</p><p>And it was only then he finally thinks to ask, “why challenge me?”</p><p>“Name,” comes the rumbling reply.</p><p>Natsume almost laughs in relief. “You want your name returned?” The creature nods once, moving with aching slowness. “Then I’ll be happy to. If you just tell me what-”</p><p>“NO!”</p><p>Each word before made the ground vibrate, but now it tremors violently, as though the forest itself were reacting to the power of that one word. Natsume loses his balance, falls to the ground awkwardly, then looks up, expecting the creature to attack. But it just stands there, watching him with the glassy eyes.</p><p>“Reiko. Says. Gifts. Are. Debt.” It grinds out. “Fight. Me. For. My. Name.”</p><p>Fight?! The creature was a giant, strong and solid and the trees themselves seem afraid of it. But what choice did he have? </p><p>“Very Well.”</p><p>The creature doesn’t reply, it just raises one enormous fist into the air and starts to bring it down. Natsume scrambles to the left… but no impact comes. The ground remains still. He looks up. The creature looks quizzically back down at him. Seeing Natsume looking at him again, he starts the motion again. Fist up. Fist down halfway once. Twice.</p><p>Natsume understands on the third repeat of the gesture. And on what would have been the fourth, he put his hand out, palm down. </p><p>The creature studies his hand. Then its own hand, in the same configuration.</p><p>“Tie,” It mutters.</p><p>“Tie,” Agreed Sensei, sounding thoroughly bored.</p><p> </p><p>Ten minutes later (and after an unusual number of ties) Natsume loses the game of roshambo and returns the name -- Hikarihana, fittingly -- to the giant. It’s smile was strangely pretty, like the unfolding of a flower’s petals. </p><p>Then he’s led down a path to a little enclosure of the flowering vines. At their approach, the vines part like a curtain to reveal Tanuma. He sit on the ground, head leaning on his hand, elbow propped up on a rough table made of more vines, all wound together, eyes closed. He’s dozed off waiting here in this quiet little room. A few pieces of fruit, untouched, lat on the other side of the table, presumably for if he got hungry.</p><p>“Hey,” Natsume says, crossing to his friend and shaking his shoulder gently. “Tanuma?”</p><p>Tanuma’s eyes flutter open, and he looks puzzled for a moment, before sleep releases its hold and he seems to recognize where he is. “Ah. So it’s over?” he asks with a smile. "Did you lose?”</p><p>“Did I …” How does he know that? And when Tanuma casts a glance at Sensei, he knows, he KNOWS that the cat had known everything all along. He rounds on Sensei. “You knew about this!”</p><p>“Yes I did,” the cat replies. “What about it?</p><p>Natsume can’t find the words, but assumes his expression does the talking for him. </p><p>After his moment of defiance, at least Sensei has the good grace to look a bit ashamed. “That one was adamant about the right way to challenge for his name,” he explains, hopping up on the table, where Tanuma pats his head absentmindedly. “I tried to tell him you weren’t Reiko, that challenging you would be different, but he’s basically a rock, and once he has the shape of a thought, it’s hard to change it. He was convinced the proper form was to steal something important of Reiko’s as a challenge. She would come and they would play. He always lost. How one can lose at a game like that every time…” he shakes his head.</p><p>“Why didn’t you just come get me?”</p><p>“There wasn’t a lot of time,” he retorts. “He was planning on taking Touko, you know. So I went to your friend to set this up before he could.”</p><p>Natsume blanched. “Aunt Touko?”</p><p>“Yeah. You can reward me for my quick thinking and negotiating skills later,” Sensei says, seeming mollified now that the blame had gone out of Natsume’s voice. “Since the temple was near, I asked Tanuma.”</p><p>“I wasn’t doing anything tonight anyway, so just sitting around here to help out your aunt seemed like the right decision” the latter says apologetically. “And my father’s out of town until Monday, so-”</p><p>“Uh…” </p><p>He doesn’t even have to say anything more. Tanuma looks confused for a second, then his eyes widen and shift toward the wall of the little room as though he can see the temple from there if he tries hard enough. “I gotta go,” he says, looking up at the giant, who nods ponderously. Then, more formally, he adds, “Thank you for the hospitality.” Then he is following Natsume out, through the glowing woods and under the arch and into the old yard where no one had lived for decades. </p><p>As they make their way rapidly toward the temple, Natsume seeths. “I can’t believe he did that.”</p><p>“He was trying to protect your family, you know,” Tanuma says, not exactly chiding but more … clarifying, Natsume guesses. Which wasn’t wrong. He just doesn’t like how long Sensei had kept silent about it despite knowing what was going on.</p><p>Although … if he’d said something, Natsume would have run out right away. Worrying Aunt Touko. Which would have defeated the purpose of the plan they’d put in place. </p><p>Sometimes, he thinks ruefully, having people looking out for you could be more stressful than going it alone. </p><p>They cobble together an explanation for Tanuma’s dad about him falling asleep while reading in the forest, and the prospect that his son just dropped off to sleep for this long in the middle of nowhere clearly worries the man, but the worry isn’t enough to overcome the relief at seeing him back. He offers to let Natsume stay the night, but Natsume thinks guiltily of Aunt Touko wishing him a good night with worry in her eyes, and politely declines. He makes his way home and goes to bed sometime after two in the morning.</p><p>Sensei doesn’t return until the next morning, drunk and with a lingering glow like the flower pollen around the edges of his mouth, which gives him some idea why Sensei did all this instead of just cowing the spirit into submission right away.</p><p>But he can’t find it in himself to scold him. Everyone’s safe. </p><p>So, he supposes, it’s fine.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Prompt 25: The Girl in the Park</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>When you can see yokai, sometimes things can get confusing.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Is she a yokai?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Natsume is sitting at a picnic table, listening with half of his attention to Taki as she explains the plot of a movie she watched recently and found utterly enthralling. The other half of his brain is watching the girl, the stranger, out of the corner of his eye. She’s sitting on bench under a nearby tree, reading a small poetry book. She wears a somewhat old fashioned dress -- long skirt, long sleeves, carefully made lace, a western-style dress but not in any modern cut. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a yokai in that sort of clothing -- their clothing tended toward the traditional. But he wasn’t sure he’d seen a dress like that in real life, ever. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The special effects for the magic were really amazing,” Taki was saying. Next to Natsume, Nishimura was hanging on her every word. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No one was paying attention to the woman, Natsume thought as he sipped on his soda. It could just be that everyone was minding their own business. Or it could be that they couldn’t see her. And honestly, it usually wouldn’t have mattered to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except that every once in a while, she glanced up over her poetry book at their table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their eyes had met, the first time he noticed it, and she immediately looked back down to the page, as though trying to pretend she hadn’t been caught looking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, if she was a yokai, she wanted something from one of them. Probably him but he’d learned over the years never to count anything out. Should he approach her? Or just leave her alone and deal with her if she came over here? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t going to let her ruin this day out with friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, you with us?” asked a voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked up to see Taki had either finished or interrupted her story, and all three of his friends -- she, Nishimura and Kitamoto -- were staring at him. She was grinning at him, a look of mischief in her face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s flirting,” Kitamoto said from his spot next to Taki. when that got a reaction out of all three of them, he raised his eyebrow and asked the other two. “You haven’t noticed?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Taki sounded both intrigued and scandalized. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kitamoto tilted his head ever so slightly in the direction of the young woman on the bench. “Guess I can see why. That girl over there. She’s pretty, but a little otherworldly, right? Like she’s some sort of time traveler.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Taki glanced over, circumspect. Nishimura showed no such restraint until Kitamoto spoke his name in a sharp, quiet tone, as though he were a misbehaving puppy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s cute,” Taki agreed. A beat later, she added, “And she’s definitely looking over here. You should talk to her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then she looked at him, and something in the sheepish expression seemed to tell her what had happened. Maybe not all of it, but enough. In a less teasing, more gentle tone she added, “People like that are rare, Sometimes you can even see the unusual aura they carry. Anyone would be interested. She kinda looks like some spirit or something. Right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She appealed to Kitamoto, who nodded in agreement -- he’d just taken a bite of his fries, and maintained enough of his manners to not talk around them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Natsume smiled at her, grateful.” Uh, yeah,” he said. “You know, maybe I will.”</span>
</p>
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